


Blood Bond

by SalomeWordsmith



Category: Naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalomeWordsmith/pseuds/SalomeWordsmith
Summary: Shisui and Itachi fail to stop their clan's treason. Instead of the Uchiha Downfall, Konoha has the coup d'état. Brace yourselves for the story of betrayal, for the night Fugaku and the Uchiha brought down the Hidden Leaf... (alternative storyline || blood, madness and OCs included)
Relationships: Uchiha Fugaku/Uchiha Mikoto, Uchiha Shisui/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 7





	1. PART ONE. Treason. Plot. Overture: The Calm Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Blutsbande](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29197905) by [SalomeWordsmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalomeWordsmith/pseuds/SalomeWordsmith)



**PART ONE.**

**Treason. Plot.**

**Overture.**

**The Calm Before the Storm.**

_ They say before you start a war _

_ You better know what you're fighting for _

_ [Angel with a Shotgun – The Cab] _

“This is the point of no return, isn’t it?” Mikoto asked when she saw her husband’s hands dripping with blood.

“Yes,” he answered as he closed the door behind his back.

Her arms tightened around the boy who was sleeping her lap. “All of them?”

“Nearly.“ He took a white towel to clean his hands from the oozy red. Dark rims remained under his fingernails. „Danzō escape.” 

“How about… Itachi?” Mikoto asked hesitantly. “What happened to him?”

No answer. Her sight blurred. “Please, I’m begging you, Fugaku.” She started to shake. “If he-... or if you-... I just want to know whether…” The first tear ran down her cheek. For a short moment, she saw everything clear, before her eyes blurred again and became clear once more as a second tear rolled down her face. “Is he okay?”

Fugaku put the towel down. “Don’t worry, he’s alive. We set and arrested him close to the Nakano River.”

Her heart was beating so loud that she feared it might wake up the sleeping child in her arms. “What will happen to him?”

Fugaku stripped off his blood-soaked shirt and unfolded the fresh one she had prepared for him when he had left the house a few hours ago. “This is yet to decide. Still, treason is treason, Mikoto.”

Mikoto wiped away her tears. “I see…”

Silence.

It lingered on them for several minutes. However, Mikoto felt as if her husband could hear her thoughts anyway, even without words.

“I will speak up for him,” Fugaku finally proclaimed, “but I can’t tell if my word will change anything.”

“You have to try to nevertheless.” Mikoto could barely speak because she fought so hard to hold back the tears. Her voice sounded unfamiliarly cold. “Itachi is our son after all. Please, keep that in mind. I can’t lose him!”

“We already have.” She faced Fugaku’s back; therefore, she couldn’t see that there was a telltale twinkle in his eyes, too. “Itachi made his choice. Even if I can convince the others to spare his life it won’t make  _ any  _ difference. He chose his way! And no matter how often I ask him to he won’t change his mind. He will always choose  _ against us.  _ He is gone - ultimately and unreachable.” Fugaku’s shoulders began to tremble. “It would be easier if he… if he was…”

“If he was dead,” Mikoto whispered. She lifted the boy in her arms a few inches to pull back her legs and bed his small body down on the tatami mats that covered the floor.

“Yes,” she continued, as she stood up and approached her husband “Yes, it would be easier if we were allowed to grief our son’s death instead of being entitled to despise him for his treason.”

From the spot where she had been sitting, it took her eleven steps to reach Fugaku: …  _ eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven… _

Mikoto hugged her husband from behind. Her chin nestled up against his shoulder. She kissed his neck.

Fugaku sighed as his cheek sank into her soft hair. “I never will, won’t I? I will never despise him.”

“How could you?” she mumbled. “He is your child. You will always love him.”  _ And you will never be over the fact that you’ve lost him. It’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.  _ “However, never let anyone instead of me know how you truly feel. They’d misinterpret your pain and lose their trust in you.”

He turned around in her embrace.  _ I know,  _ said the dreary expression on his face.

Seeing him like that, red-eyed and with wet cheeks, made Mikoto’s heart want to break.

She sobbed. Her fingers dug deeper into his shirt. “So, don’t hesitate if they insist to execute him. Just do it.” She was trembling harder than before. “Promise me to do it  _ yourself.  _ Please, make sure our child doesn’t have to suffer. Treason or not - you owe our son a gentle death.”

Fugaku raised his left hand and touched her temple to feel the rushing blood in her veins. His fingers slid down her jaw, over her cheeks and finally stroke her lips, before he covered them with his own. “I promise,” he whispered while kissing her.

Mikoto wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed deeply, as she opened her mouth to kiss him back.  _ You’re a good man, Fugaku,  _ she thought.  _ I wish the world knew. _

Behind them, someone suddenly knocked on the door. “We’re ready, Taichō.”

Mikoto felt - or at least, believed to feel - that Fugaku only grudgingly interrupted their kiss.

“Just give me another moment,” he answered through the door, turning over his shoulder. The sudden harshness in his voice cut deep into Mikoto’s soul. “I’ll be right with you.”

“ _ Hai.”  _ Beyond the door, stepping feet vanished.

Mikoto took a deep breath before she wiped away Fugaku’s tears. Despise her own, she forced a smile. “Are you ready?”

“Determined by all means.”

Fugaku took her hands and breathed a kiss on her skin before he slid her by to walk the eleven steps that separated him from the sleeping boy on the floor.

Mikoto stayed back. Fresh tears filled her eyes as she watched her husband kneeling down next to her youngest son. Fugaku brushed the boy’s black hair back to print a kiss on his forehead. “I love you, Sasuke,” he whispered. “If you wake up tomorrow morning, it will be done. Things will finally be as they should.” Fugkau kissed the child a second time. “ _ I promise.” _


	2. PART ONE. Treason. Plot. ACT I. Stormclouds.

**PART ONE.**

**Treason. Plot.**

**Act One.**

**Stormclouds.**

**II**

_ For too long now, there were secrets in my mind _

_ For too long now, there were things I should have said _

_ In the darkness, I was stumbling for the door _

_ To find a reason, to find the time, the place, the hour _

_ [Tears of the Dragon – Bruce Dickinson] _

“Have you ever had your hands in a human skull?” Natsume asked. His right hand's index and middle fingers stuck in an eye-socket that was gushing with blood.

Satoshi wrinkled up his nose. “No.”

“Let’s change this answer, shall we? Come on over here."

Hesitantly, Satoshi drew a few steps closer and huddled down next to Natsume. His knees squeezed blood out of the soil which quickly soaked the fabric of his light-grey trousers. 

“My fingers are plugging the wound from which he is bleeding,” Natsume explained, “I can heal it, but need one or two minutes to prepare the jutsu. Meanwhile, you take over for me to make sure he doesn't lose more blood.”

Satoshi gulped. “Are you serious?”

“I usually don’t joke around in the face of ripped-out eyes, you know.” The body of the unconscious young man twitched under Natsume’s hand. He wore black t-shirt, embroidered with the Uchiha's crest. “Come on, before he regains consciousness.”

“Do you want me to sanitise my hands before?” Satoshi asked. He kept his eyes fixed on Natsume’s fingers which disappeared half-way between lashes and closed lids.

Natsume’s eyebrows went up. “What do you think, hm?”

“Sorry.” Satoshi cleared his throat. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

The small plastic bottle containing the germicide was still lying in the grass next to the unconscious young Uchiha. Satoshi’s hand trembled as he picked the small bottle up and pressed down its spout a couple of times. The spray drizzled on his skin and formed a thin film. Satoshi dispersed it thoroughly on both hands. The smell of alcohol stung in his nose and the hair on his arms straightened up - partly because of the cool spray, partly due to the thought that he was about to put his fingers into a bleeding eye-socket.

His hand seized for the fleshy hole but hesitated when his eyes fell upon his fingernails: suddenly, they appeared like claws to him.

“Baka!” Natsume hissed as, without warning, Satoshi put his hand into his mouth to nibble off his fingernails. “Now you have to sanitise your hands again. That’s something you're doing  _ before. _ ”

Satoshi picked up the germicide a second time. “Sorry,” he repeated and spit out a thin piece of nails. “I’ve  _ really  _ never done anything like this before.”

“Oh, I can tell that,” Natsume sighed. “No need to keep on repeating it every few seconds.”

“Very supportive, man.  _ Thank you." _

Natsume rolled his eyes. "Go ahead already, stick your finger in that hole."

Under any other circumstances, Satoshi had probably made a joke about sticking a finger into a hole; today, he fought the urge to throw up as he carefully put his index finger into the red puddle. His middle finger followed.

_ It's just a jar of strawberry jam,  _ he told himself.  _ That's why it's warm, that's why it's sticky. Because it's melted strawberry jam, not blood. Sweet jam that attracts wasps and moulds if not stored in the fridge. _

The eye-socket smacked as Satoshi's finger squeezed blood out of the fleshy hole. It slopped and ran down the young Uchiha's pale face, streamed down his temples into his ears, over the cheeks, lips, chin, and neck into his clothes and curly black hair. 

The inside of the socket felt soft like a rotten fruit, while the blood was even stickier, oozier than expected. More like syrup than jam.

Shreds of gore floated in the sticky, red liquid, and Satoshi had the impression that these shreds of gore wrapped up his fingers.

"I think I'm going to throw up…" he muttered.

His wrist touched Natsume's. They got into each other's way in the small eye-socket. 

"Got it?" Natsume asked.

Satoshi's fingers slid at the place of Natsume's. Something pulsed against his skin. It felt like squeezing a twitching slug.

_ Strawberry jam!,  _ Satoshi screamed at himself in his thoughts as he closed his eyes.

III

Presumably, things would've come different that fateful night if Tetsuka Amaya hadn't dislocated her left shoulder two weeks ago.

She would have been somewhere on the road between Na no Kuni and Konoha along with her teammates Natsume and Satoshi instead of leaning over the sink in the kitchen and digging her teeth into the red flesh of a watermelon.

With every bite, drops of the sticky juice oozed over her fingers and pattered down the sink:  _ Plong. Plong. Plong. _

Amaya stood in the kitchen barefooted and wrapped into a blue towel with white spots. Beads of sweat sparkled upon her skin because she had just finished a hot bath. Her hair was still wet and stuck to her naked shoulders. Tiny water drops ran down her purple curls and over her skin.

The window stood open. A warm breeze carried the cry of a harsh voice through the village: " _ This is an emergency call to all villagers! Seek shelter in the emergency bunkers immediately! This is a direct order from the Hokage! Konoha is in danger!“ _ Amaya heard the call; however, she didn't notice it. It was yet too far away, too shallow to attract attention, only a sound among many along with the twittering birds in the garden or the barking dogs of the Inuzuka who lived across the street. " _ All the ninjas gather on the 34th Training Ground! Wait for further instructions! _ "

Amaya dropped the gnawed-off melon piece into the sink before she grabbed a second one. A few of the brown pips dropped on her naked toes as she dug her teeth into this fresh piece of fruit. At the same moment, the doorbell rang.

Smacking, Amaya squinted to the clock above the oven.  _ One hour too early _ , the hands claimed.

Amaya put the half-finished piece of melon on a plate and wiped her mouth and hands clean.

“Not ready yet, Anko,” she said approaching the door. “But there’s some sake in the fridge if you want to-”

Amaya stopped in the middle of the sentence because she was close enough at the entrance now to recognise that there were two people waiting beyond the sliding-door: their bodies cast shadows upon the rice paper

“Open up!”

“We have a problem here!”

Amaya tightened the towel around her body thoroughly as she could tell by the voices that the two shadows outside the house belonged to men.

Carefully, she opened the door a little to peek through the small gap, staring right into two pairs of flaming sharingan-eyes. “Yes, please?”

“We want to speak to Tetsuka Jun,” one of the men said, a bald giant. He towered two heads above Amaya and still one above his companion. “The Sandaime wants him to come to the Meeting Room at the Hokage Residence. Immediately.”

Amaya blinked in confusion. “My father is on a mission,” she explained. “I don’t know when he’ll return.”

The men exchanged a brief look. The guy with the bald hair shrugged.

“What’s your name, girl?” the other asked. His eyes glistened as looked at Amaya.

She adjusted her towel. “Tetsuka Amaya.”

“Tetsuka Amaya,” he repeated, slowly nodding his head. At this moment, Amaya suddenly remembered very clearly the first time she had ever encountered a rattlesnake. It had had the same devious glint in its eyes. “So you’re going to take your father’s place then. That won’t bother anyone, I guess, as long as the Tetsuka clan is represented in the meeting.”

Amaya shook her head. “Which meeting? What’s going on here?”

" _ This is an emergency call to all villagers! Seek shelter in the emergency bunkers! This is a direct order from the Hokage! Konoha is in danger! All the ninjas gather on the 34th Training Ground! Wait for further instructions!" _

Instinctively, Amaya turned her head into the direction she assumed the harsh voice to come from. This time, she noticed the call as it had gotten closer to the district in the South of the village where Amaya and her father lived.

Her heart beat faster. “What is going on?” she asked again in a trembling voice.

The guy with the glistening eyes waved her words away. “You’re going to find out soon enough.”

“Just make sure you hurry, “ his companion added. “You are expected at the conference room at the Hokage Residence. It is an urgent matter.”

Without any other word of explanation the two men turned Amaya their backs and left the Tetsuka’s front yard behind them. The backsides of their grey shirts were imprinted with the Uchiha’s crest.

Dust swirled up as they crossed the road to knock at the gate to the Inuzuka Estate.

Clueless and with a dragging pain in her abdomen, Amaya stayed behind in the doorframe watching the Inuzuka's gate swung open. A small boy with brown hair and a white puppy on his head looked up at the two Uchiha. “Hello, this is Inuzuka Kiba. Can I help you?”

“Yes,” the giant said. “We want to speak to Inuzuka Tsume.”

Kiba turned around. “Muuuum!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Here are two men who want to speak to you.”

Amaya took a deep breath and returned to the house to get dressed. She started to make sense of the short encounter:  _ The Hokage’s gathering the clan leaders. Whatever is lying ahead, it is huge.” _

Little did she know that the Hokage, Sarurobi Hiruzen, was already dead at that point... 


	3. PART ONE.  Treason. Plot.  ACT ONE.  Thunder.

**PART ONE.**

**Treason. Plot.**

**Act One.**

**Thunder.**

**III**

_ Time will show _

_ If you did right to put your sails _

_ Into the wind, over the sea, into the storm _

_ [Darkest Age – Renegade Five] _

The veil of green light that clad Natsume’s right hand turned denser: the energy from his fingertips concentrated in a small dot in his palm. Like the spark on a burning match, it streamed from Natsume’s palm through his index finger into its tip. While the shining dot moved, its colour vanished, as the light gleamed brighter.

“Careful,” Natsume warned and stretched his arm away from his face. “Hot.”

“What are you doing?” Satoshi asked and leaned back to make sure not to get to close to the strange white light.

“It’s a modification of the Shosen no Jutsu,” Natsume explained. “I invented it: by squeezing the chakra into a small dot I increase the energy density, concentrate it, which produces heat.”

“So what?”

“Watch me. Stay still, okay?”

Natsume’s advice was crucial because without it Satoshi most definitely would have pulled his hand away as Natsume bent over to put his lips over the Uchiha’s brows and cheekbones.

Satoshi winced at the feeling of his teammate’s tongue on his skin.

“Now I  _ certainly  _ will throw up…”

Natsume left the wound alone and turned his face sidewards, his glowing index finger stretched away as far as possible from everything that was vivid flesh. He spat out: blood, saliva, and an oozy strand, which mixed both and only released Natsume’s mouth when he used his free hand to wipe it away.

“You, my friend, are not normal,” Satoshi commented, stunned by the snotty blood-saliva-concoction in the grass.

Natsume shrugged. Translation:  _ How else am I supposed to do it? _

He pulled a gauze bandage out of his shuriken-bag and squeezed it into the eye-socket to suck out the last drops of blood and make it as dry as possible.

Then he adjusted the Uchiha’s head. The left half of his face was swollen and black skin shimmered through a think layer of scab, while the right side of his jaw inclined clockwise.

“Ready?” Natsume asked. Satoshi nodded his head without knowing for what. “On three, you pull your hand away, got it?” Satoshi nodded again. “If you have to puke, turn your head to make sure the wound stays clean.”

“I won’t puke. I saw enough to bear such a sight.”  _ After all, my hand’s stuck in a human skull and I’m not throwing up even though you’ve sucked on my finger like a baby just a few seconds ago! _

Natsume shrugged again.  _ Wait for it,  _ the gesture was supposed to mean this time. “One. Two. Three.”

Satoshi pulled his hand back, Natsume took his place.

The lucent chakra concentration in his fingertip barely touched the open wound in the eye-socket, but that was enough for the heat to vaporised the fluids in the tissue. 

That’s why Natsume had dried the eye-socket beforehand: otherwise, the blood would’ve started to boil and scaled the Uchiha’s skull from the inside. This way, it cauterised the torn vessels. The bleeding stopped.

Involuntarily, Satoshi rolled his eyes: the stench of burned flesh was  _ disgusting…  _ and, somehow, sweet. It appeared to Satoshi like a whiplash aiming for his sense of smell but hitting the stomach instead.

Satoshi groaned as he turned around and threw up viscous orange. “I’m fine,” he exclaimed without being asked and threw up a second time.

Natsume left it without comment. He opened the bottle of germicide and poured some of the liquid into the freshly healed eye-socket. Then, he grabbed a kunai to cut another bandage apart, drenched it with the remaining disinfectant, and stuffed the fabric in the Uchiha’s eye before putting a patch on it.

Afterwards, he turned to Satoshi who was throwing up a third serving of half-digested food, partly through his nose. “Are you okay, buddy?”

“You didn’t warn me about this awful stench!” Satoshi croaked. His throat and the inside of his nose burned like fire. He smelled and tasted a bittersweet blending of almonds, green tea and peaches. “Oh dear, and I thought we could have a relaxed evening when returning home.”

“Probably not.” Natsume sighed. “The eye wasn’t damaged in combat but ripped out on purpose. Someone stole it.”

Satoshi spat out. “Because of the Sharingan, I guess.”

“Konoha will be in real trouble if the secrets of the Uchiha end up in the wrong hands.”

“You’re thinking about Orochimaru, aren’t you?”

It hadn’t been long ever since the Sanin had been banished because of his lunatic experiments. Satoshi had heard about the rumours.

Natsume nodded his head. “We have to report this. Go to the village and tell the Hokage to send a squad. The wound was fresh. Whoever is responsible for this, they can’t have gotten too far yet. Maybe we still have a chance to get them. And, please make sure he sends some medics as well to support me here.”

Satoshi sighed and thoughtfully looked at the wounded Uchiha on the ground. If he really couldn’t feel any pain in his unconsciousness, as Natsume claimed? Satoshi wasn’t convinced. “Poor guy…”

“Shisui,” Natsume said. “His name is Shisui.” And answering Satoshi’s wondering expression, he added “As Ge-Nin, we were in the same team. It has been a while ever since, of course, but for a couple of years we were a team: him, Amaya and me until he joined the ANBU Force and you took his place.”

“I see.” Satoshi stood up with his clothes oozing from blood and vomit. “Can you handle this on your own here?”

“Sure.”

IV

_ No mercy from the edge of the blade _

_ Dare escape and learn the price to be paid _

_ Let the water flow with shades of red now _

_ [Hail to the King – Avenged Sevenfold] _

It seemed like the explosion had waited for Amaya to leave the house: as soon as her second foot touched the ground outside the front door, a flash of ruby lightning with deep violet shades struck the sky. Just a heartbeat later, a wave of dazzling light broke over the roofs of Konoha Gakure. The air flickered and a roll of thunder made the earthquake. The windowpanes of the surrounding houses grunted as they bent inwards.

Something stroke Amaya’s body, gentle like the paw of a kitten but unbearably  _ hot.  _ Behind her back, the rice paper of the sliding door caught on fire.

_ Get down!  _ Amaya’s mind commanded.  _ On the floor! _

Amaya took the three stairs from the porch to the front lawn with a single leap. As soon as her feet found the ground, she threw herself into the gravel between the flowerbeds. To protect her head, she crossed her hands behind the neck.

The bent glass of the windows burst. Like petals in the spring, the shards scattered and rained down on Amaya’s body.

Only hesitatingly, she dared to raise her head again and froze:  _ What the hell is that?! _

Beyond the wall, close to the East End of the village stood a giant translucent spectre of a skeleton. It glowed in a golden light and was veiled with flickering flames.

The creature in its whole topped the village walls, even the highest of Konoha’s buildings only reached its lowest ribs, and a single one of its cervicals was bigger than Amaya. Like claws, the ridges clinched to the sternum of the shining bone beast.

The eye-sockets of the bare skull glistened red and instead of a nose, there was only a black-yellow hole shaped like an upsidedown heart. The jaws were gritted and grinned the fierce smile of a pirate flag. Even over the distance of at least two miles, Amaya’s eyes could clearly distinguish the grooves in the skeleton man’s enamel. Carefully, she lifted her belly from the floor and crawled backwards with only the tips of her fingers and toes touching the ground. The broken glass cut deep into her skin, made warm blood flow.

However, Amaya noticed the pain as little as she wanted to believe what was happening in front of her eyes: like rose tendrils, fibres climbed up the glowing skeleton, sheathed the bare bones and erected the crooked spine.

The creature came to live. It raised its head, tilted the chin, and its left hand reached for the sky. Finger by finger it contracted to form a fist at last.

Despite the distance, Amaya saw,  _ perceived _ , the twitching of every single muscle string in the spectre’s arm and hand.

A sudden gust of wind rose in the west and rushed towards the bone figure. On Amaya’s body, the wind felt like a whiplash. Her skin turned red and her eyes started to tear.

When the gush hit the ghost creature, the air  _ materialised _ , turned into - as unbelievable as it may sound - a complete armour with helmet, cuirass and arm and leg guards. 

A grinning mask hid the ghost’s face that wore the fierce look of a demon with fangs and ox horns.

_ A samurai,  _ Amaya thought in disbelief,  _ A shining ghost samurai! _

The warrior slowly turned his head from one side to the other, the look of its fiery eyes hit Amaya’s; just for the fraction of a second, but long enough to suck all the energy from her muscles. Her arms and legs gave in so that she sank to the floor on her stomach. This time, she stayed down and stared up at the samurai in terror.

He, meanwhile, raised his right leg and took a step forwards. The village wall crushed underneath the giant foot. The noise made Amaya shiver: she imagined that this was what grinding a rock with one’s teeth would sound like.

She saw dust whirling up, covering the ghost samurai up to his shoulders while he still held his fist up in the air. Then, a new crack and a fresh fountain of brown mist rose from a second step. The V-shaped divide in the wall looked like the wings of a moth.

Amaya’s skin tingled as she thought about the fact that the monster not only stood between buildings now but, presumably, on the rubble of some houses (with humans in them), too.

The samurai raised his chin, laid his head in his neck and, again, Amaya saw the contraction of every single muscle; even through the armour and didn’t even wonder at all how this could be possible.

The ghost tightened its chest and arched the back. Its left shoulder blade pulled the hanging arm back, while the raised one reached a little further for the sky.

_ It…. It’s gathering strength! It’s ready to strike! _

Indeed, the samurai screamed. The sound waves seemed to stream through Amaya’s body.

She groaned and let her forehead sink to the ground as she waited for the samurai’s scream to break her bones. Therefore, she couldn’t’ see how the raised fist slammed into the ground.

The earth cracked open and a deep crater dug its way through Konoha’s streets. Houses broke apart and disappeared in whirling swaths of dust.

Amaya felt the quake beneath her body. Her jaw was shaking even though she clenched her teeth as hard as she could.

_ Don’t look,  _ her mind advised.  _ Just don’t look. _

After all, what she felt, heard and smelled was more than enough for her imagination to let her inner eye see what was going on around her.

She heard screams, hollow scrams like played from a tape in the form of a bizarre round without music or melody. Pattering. Rustling. Blows. Blows again and again. Metallic blows. Wooden blows. Hallow blows. Shrieks.

The stench of sulphur and smoke drenched the air and filled Amaya’s stomach with nausea. She retched quietly.

It took her minutes until she dared to look up even though the earth had calmed again. The noise, however, kept on raging. Grey ash flakes rained from the sky but the ghost samurai had disappeared.

On its spot, however, the air was still flaring with red and yellow bolts of lightning. Through the V-shaped gap in the village wall, Amaya spotted the ditch from the samurai’s punch: it was a few feet deep and reached miles into the brushwood. Giant roots of trees, several hundred years old, protruded from the soil. Everything that was supposed to be green and vital was now charred and dead.

In the opposite direction, the swath of destruction continued its way through the village; however, a thick wall of dust and house-shaped shadows blocked Amaya’s view. Flames were tearing up so high that the sky above the Hidden Leaf turned red.

The wall of dust cut through half of the village and even reached the Market Square in the centre. That’s where the noise came from - the shrieking, the hallow screams, the whining, the lamentation.

Amaya felt dizzy.

“Please stay calm and continue the evacuation!” the harsh voice cried through the noise. “Help each other! Ninjas, follow your orders!”

“Follow your orders!” Amaya told herself and shook her head to chase away the fear and confusion before she pushed herself back to her feet and rushed towards the Hokage Rock. The broken glass crunched under her steps.

In white shreds, her skin clung to bloody cuts. It was supposed to hurt,  _ burn _ , but Amaya didn’t feel pain at all.

_ There’s a plan,  _ she told herself while she dashed through the streets and leapt from roof to roof.  _ There has to be a plan! Hokage-sama will tell us what to do if - when this monstrosity arises again. That’s why he’s calling us. Because he has a plan. The Sandaime has a plan! _

Amaya didn’t even dare to imagine anything else. After all, what did the alternative look like? A carnage like seven years ago when the Kyuubi attacked. That memory made Amaya shiver. “We will prevail once more!”


	4. PART ONE. Treason. Plot. Act One. Chaos. IV

**PART ONE.**

**Treason. Plot.**

**Act One.**

**Chaos.**

**IV**

_ Master of puppets, I'm pulling your strings _

_ Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams _

_ Blinded by me, you can't see a thing _

_ Just call my name, 'cause I'll hear you scream _

_ [Master of Puppets – Metallica] _

This evening, Konoha resembled an anthill distorted by some stupid boy with a stick. Hasting people stuffed even the narrowest lanes. 

They dashed through the streets screaming, pushed each other away, or were tripping over each other as they tried to find shelter in the emergency bunkers hidden in the deeps of Hokage Rock.

For instance, there was this crying little girl in Main Street who huddled in front of the rubble of the Yamanaka Flower Shop. The upper floors of the building, the roof included, had tumbled to the selling room. The house next door, a BBQ restaurant, was ablaze and the hungry flames reached for the flower shop, leaked through destroyed joists and shattered bricks.

The crying girl's short fringed hair was tousled and nearly vanished beneath grey flakes of ashes. A dusty layer of black covered her face which blurred where tears streamed down her face.

"Mummy," she wailed and rubbed the grime out of her blue eyes. A circle of trampled down flowers and colourful shards of broken vases enclosed her. "Mummy…"

Beneath one of the burning joists, there was a black clump with a human silhouette. The charred something of a blank skull with two holes and a missing appeared to Amaya like the mask of a melting waxwork but barely resembled a human face anymore.

A few seconds after Amaya discovered the little girl she went disappeared beneath hastening legs. The people tripped over the child without even noticing it.

Amaya thought about throwing herself into the crowd to save the kid from the faceless bulk. However, she ignored this idea the very moment it crossed her mind.

_ Follow your orders,  _ she told herself and kept on rushing towards the Hokage Residence.  _ Follow your orders. Everyone has a task to fulfil. _

By leaping from roof to roof, Amaya could finally see the whole devastation the Ghost Samurai's punch had done to the village: the crater carved deeply through the village, from the wall to its centre. It was approximately nine feet deep and 30 feet broad. Fountains fired from broken water pipelines into the sky. They turned the crater into a trench of sludge, tons and tons heavy. Countless bodies wallowed in the deadly mud; bodies from which Amaya couldn't imagine that they had been living humans a few minutes ago.

They were slashed and squashed so one could almost deem them to be watermelons.

_ Watermelons…  _ Amaya was close to throwing up.

Occasionally, only legs and feet stuck out from the blurred ground. Occasionally, people were buried in the mud up to their necks. Some of them were still alive. Their faces were turning blue and their lips opened to voiceless screams which their moths couldn't release since the heavy mud squeezed the oxygen from their lungs.

Amaya wondered why no shinobi helped. A doton user could have easily saved those poor suffering souls from their deathly prisons. Where were all the ninjas who were supposed to protect the civilians?

Amaya deemed it impossible that all of them had already left the village to gather on the 34th training ground.

However, she didn't do anything herself and as much as she wondered why she couldn't help it. There was something deep inside her that made her letting the villagers down. The order to gather in the Hokage Residence seemed to be more than an oral instruction. An unconscious part of Amaya's mind knew that even the simple attempt to resist the order was doomed to fail. She had no other choice but ignoring the chaos surrounding her.

So, she didn't even help Kiba, the Inuzuka boy from across the street, who huddled on the market square between splashed fruits.

Kiba's clothes hung in shreds from his body. The naked skin beneath it shimmered red, was burst open and covered with little pustules which dripped with blood and a sticky, limpid liquid.

The poor boy screamed. For help. For his mother Tsume. For his sister Hana.

His shaking arms squeezed Akamaru's saggy body against his chest. Akamaru, the white puppy Kiba had carried on his head earlier this day, now hung in Kiba's embrace with his tongue dangling between his teeth. His lids stood wide open and the veins in his eyeballs were torn. Red dripped from his white fur.

Amaya landed close to them, hunkered down to gain momentum for the next leap. A fish exploded beneath her feet. It juices and bowels penetrated her shoes.

For the length of heartbeat, her eyes and Kiba's met before she soared through the air again and landed on the roof of the pastry shop. She defied the house's gable. On the other side, Amaya slid down the pitch of the roof and braked by mortising her heels against the rain pipe. With a controlled jump, she landed on the street again.

Panting she propped her hands on her thighs. Strands of her long hair had loosened from her ponytail and ruffled over her face. Hot sweat beaded from her forehead, while clotted blood flaked off open cuts on her skin. Every breath burnt in her throat.

"I can't stand it any longer," she gasped and licked her dry lips. "I can't go on…"

Almost half an hour had passed ever since she had left home; still, she didn't get any closer to her goal.

It was like the Ghost Samurai's punch had changed the village's whole architecture. No matter where she turned; no matter how fast she ran, the faces of the past Hokages stayed in an unreachable distance.

_ I'm caught. _

Amaya winced as these three words crossed her mind. They felt  _ powerful,  _ less like a thought more like a valiant punch in the inside of her skull.

Breathless, Amaya looked around. "Cought," she mumbled. "I am caught."

Suddenly, the world turned silent.

The power of those three words released a hot pain ( _ "What the hell is going on?")  _ behind Amaya's forehead. A part of her brain… a  _ stunned  _ part of her brain could almost grasp the meaning behind this short sentence: "I am caught…"

However, she wasn't able yet ( _ "You have nothing to fear." _ ) to realize it. Amaya stumbled and pressed her hands against her head because it felt like it was close to exploding: there was this awareness. It was there, stalking and ready to strike. Amaya felt it.

She didn't hear her thoughts anymore, she watched her mind forming this yet obscure awareness - contour by contour, hue by hue it became clearer. At first, it was only a shadow turning into silhouette but the clearer the awareness got the more the screaming, dying, hastening people around her blurred. They faded away as if ( _ "Our taichō has a little matter to discuss with you." _ ) an invisible hand erased them.

"I. Am. Caught," Amaya mumbled another time.

Every word for itself made sense, but as soon as Amaya tried to put them in context, they lost their meaning. They degenerated into a sequence ("So why the bonds though?") of empty syllables.

Amaya gasped for air: the colours around here started to bleed out. They streamed ( _ "Fugaku, you have thirty seconds to explain this!" _ ) from the sky, the ground, and the houses. All that remained was a grid in black and white of shapes which outlines barely resembled what ( _ "I don't deem you in the position to talk to me like this, Tsume.” _ ) they had been before.

Only the sky above her didn't turn black or white. It turned red, blood-red with grey clouds rushing over the expanse.

The awareness stroke. "Gen-jutsu!" Amaya said. "I'm caught! Gen-jutsu! Damn it!"

On the blood-red sky, beyond the fleeting clouds, something came to life… Eyes?

Yes, eyes! Blinking eyes. Blinking  _ sharingan  _ eyes which threatened her ( _ "Where's Hokage-sama?" _ ) from above.

Amaya backed off. However, her foot missed the ground. She tripped and fell into an endless tube made from crumbling ( _ "Busy." _ ) bricks. The blood-red sky, the threatening sharingan eyes, and the grid of shapes blurred in the distance until Amaya was surrounded by darkness.

_ Gen-jutsu!,  _ Amaya screamed at herself silently.  _ I'm not falling, not really! It's just an illusion. Wake up. I have to wake up! _

As Amaya thought this the laws of physics suddenly ( _ "He wasn't the one calling us here, was he?" _ ) changed: instead of falling, Amaya started to rise. She rose fast like a human air bubble from the deepest depths of the ocean.

In the darkness, Amaya detected mist and a blue light beyond it.

For her mind, the border between illusion and reality was manifested in these ( _ "Well observed." _ ) murky swaths. They were the membrane she had to pierce in order to reach ( _ "What do you want?" _ ) the surface of her consciousness.

Amaya dived into the mist and glided through it. It felt tenacious, mucilaginous ( _ "Controlling this village." _ ) like jelly.

_ Light. I have to reach the light. _

The blue light blazed brighter. Its beams entered the pupil of Amaya's mental eye, penetrated the retina and slid along her visual nerve right into her brain. Here, in the centre of her mind, the light exploded, illuminated her thoughts.

Amaya opened her eyes. Her chest ( _ "What do you mean?" _ ) tightened as she gasped for air. The membrane was destroyed. She had returned to reality: "It means that tomorrow, Konoha is either led by the Uchiha or ends in ruins."


End file.
